


Under the Light

by vertigofreeze



Series: Deepest Dark [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-09
Updated: 2014-04-09
Packaged: 2018-01-18 17:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1437457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vertigofreeze/pseuds/vertigofreeze
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek had been alone for years, had most likely learned to deal with whatever emotions he might have on his own, but still.  It bugged Stiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Light

**Author's Note:**

> Post Currents (s3 ep7).

Stiles wasn’t technically admitting what brought him back to the loft hours after everything ended. He could tell himself that it was because his dad was working the overnight again, or that he was feeling too strung up to work on his homework —although he thought he had a perfect reason not to give a crap about school right now given that Boyd had just died. Died? No, that was too simple a term for what happened earlier. Boyd was killed, Boyd was _impaled_ , not to put too fine a point on it. Pun absolutely not intended. Anyway, he could tell himself any number of things, but the main reason why he’d returned was to check on Derek.

What he saw when he and Cora had burst into the loft was stuck in a slow-motion loop in his head: Isaac and Miss Blake huddled in the entryway, looking horrified, Boyd’s body in a motionless heap on the flooded floor, and Derek soaking wet with bloody hands and forearms, looking as if the world had just ended. Maybe it had. Maybe it _should_.

Cora had run for the motionless form of what had been their classmate, pitching herself over him and beginning to sob, and Stiles had stepped behind Derek, taking in the iron stiffness of his shoulders and the way he held himself. Brittle, as if something fragile had just broken. Without thinking about it, he’d closed his hand over Derek’s shoulder, not considering the numerous times the guy had muscled him against a wall, slammed his head into hard objects like a steering wheel, glared poison darts at him until Stiles had removed the offending hand from Derek’s person. When someone was killed like that, the normal routines of everyday life ceased to have meaning. 

Stiles couldn’t have said if Derek was grateful for the consoling touch or if he even noticed it. Too much had happened in a short space of time, and one of their classmates — packmates, to be more precise — was dead. The loft was so full of water it sloshed, there was a body to deal with, and chaos reigned, but at some point Stiles got Isaac to tell him what had happened before he and Derek’s sister had arrived. Aiden and Ethan, huge muscley Alpha freaks that they were, had immobilized Derek’s claws and Kali had dropped Boyd on them. The sinking feeling that gave Stiles didn’t go away, not through leaving the loft and doing what he had to, checking in with Scott about Deaton and bringing him up to speed on what had happened, putting on a show for his dad about settling in for the night before the Sheriff went back to work, smiling and joking and chattering just as if there wasn’t a stone lodged somewhere in his middle, making it hard to draw a good breath.

Stiles had listened to the Sheriff’s car drive away and then sat there for a few more minutes, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. There was nothing he could do for Boyd, because Boyd was dead. The rest of his friends were fine, so far as he knew. Derek was the only loose end, and Stiles couldn’t stop thinking about what it might be like to be forced to inflict death on someone like that. Derek had been trying to form his own pack, and what did he have now? Creepy Peter, who’d forced Lydia and Derek to resurrect him. Isaac, who was now living with Scott. _Not_ Erica and Boyd, who were both… yeah, no need to go any further with that one. 

Cora. Maybe Cora was there taking care of Derek, just being there with him to see that he was all right. Stiles fidgeted and thought that over, then huffed out a sigh and got up from his desk. He’d go see, take a fan to help dry the floor in the loft. If Cora was there, he’d simply hook up the fan, say hey if anyone was in the main room and then leave. It was a simple plan, but it pleased him well enough, and Stiles went to get the round industrial fan his dad had used when they’d painted the inside of the house. On second thought, he threw in an extension cord too and got in the Jeep to make the short drive over.

It always seemed so quiet around Derek’s building, even when horrible things went on, Stiles thought as he cut the Jeep’s engine and got out. Like time dragged to a stop sometimes, or maybe like the place existed under the light, just inside some edge of deeper dark. _Okay_ , now that he’d succeeded in creeping himself out, time to go inside. He hauled the fan and extension cord out of the back and got moving, trying not to wonder what had happened to Boyd’s corpse.

There was continued silence once he was upstairs and outside Derek’s door, and he rolled his eyes at himself. He couldn’t stop seeing ghosts in every shadow, just like always. It might have been reassuring to know that some things never changed. His hands twitched, shifting the items he held and causing the cord to clank against the casing of the fan, and he bit into his own lip, mumbling, “ _Fuck_.” On a good day, Stiles couldn’t seem to get out of his own way, and this clearly wasn’t a good one.

The loft door was unlocked, and Stiles shoved it aside, listening to it rattle on its track. That would drive him _insane_ , although he knew Derek probably left it unlocked much of the time so the pack could have access to the place. Inside it was dark, and at first he thought the loft was empty. There was no sound, no movement. The floor was still wet, even if the standing water was gone, and he started for the nearest wall to look for a plug for the fan he’d brought. It wasn’t until he’d set it down, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth as he wondered if it was actually dry enough to run the thing, that he saw a huddled figure over next to the huge wall of windows. 

Derek, sitting on the floor, knees pulled to his chest and head pillowed on them, face turned toward the blank eye of the night. Stiles squinted, trying to see him better. He was soaking wet still, not having changed out of the clothes he’d been wearing when everything had happened, and he didn’t move so much as a hair, although he had to be aware of Stiles’s presence.

Stiles frowned. Where was Cora? He could be wrong and the girl could be upstairs, but somehow he couldn’t see Derek sitting like that, bent over as if barely holding himself together, if his sister could come in at any moment. Derek would be strong and stoic for her, knowing that she and Boyd had been imprisoned together for so long there’d have to be some bonds there. The more Stiles saw of Derek, the more he realized that the guy was more about others than himself, even if people didn’t always see that through his surly, gruff exterior. So he could only conclude that Cora had bailed, gone to howl out her grief in the woods or whatever, and that didn’t sit right. Derek had been alone for years, had most likely learned to deal with whatever emotions he might have on his own, but still. It bugged Stiles.

Looking back to the fan and the cord, Stiles decided he could risk hooking it up, and he quickly plugged in the extension cord, then attached it to the fan and set it where it would blow on what looked to be the dampest patch of floor but not directly on Derek. He had to be half-frozen as it was even with his werewolf hotness. _Literal_ hotness, thanks very much. It had been too tough a day for metaphors.

The strong whir of the fan’s blades filled the loft, and somehow that made it easier for Stiles to wipe his hands on his jeans and approach the spot where Derek was sitting, unmoving. Did he think about how everything he touched turned to shit, about how everything always went fucking wrong? Was Derek’s brain telling him _it’s all your fault_ the way his own did so often? Carefully, Stiles sat down, instantly feeling the chill of the damp floor seeping through his clothes. It was unlike him to be silent, to resist the urge to flail his hands and fill empty spaces with his huge, honking mouth, to babble about nothing and everything, but he did it.

What could he even say right now? Nothing, that was what, so he didn’t.

At least five minutes passed with Stiles staring fixedly at the back of Derek’s head and Derek continuing to not move, and finally Derek mumbled, “Go home, Stiles.”

Stiles jumped a little when Derek spoke and wondered what was wrong with him. Sure, the loft wasn’t the most cheery place he’d ever been right then, especially with the knowledge that someone had died here earlier tonight, but it was safe enough at the moment. Maybe it was bothering him that he didn’t know what to do, what to say. Stiles Stilinski was a fan of doing something even if it was wrong… and it generally was. If Derek didn’t want him here, he should leave. But he couldn’t bring himself to. 

Exhaling silently, Stiles picked up the hand closest to Derek and placed it on the back of the guy’s neck. Just like earlier, he wasn’t expecting to be snapped at or hit, because Derek wasn’t himself. He didn’t necessarily anticipate any reaction from Derek at all, and that may have been why it surprised him when he got one. Not much of one, but the way Derek turned his face downward mere centimeters and made the faintest sound — a sound Stiles couldn’t even identify — came right after the palm of his hand touched Derek’s skin. He didn’t jerk away, didn’t tell Stiles not to touch him.

Stiles tripped over his tongue on a regular basis, and he didn’t think words would be his friend in this situation either. So he sat, letting his hand warm Derek’s slightly chilly skin in that one spot, feeling Derek’s sodden shirt soak into the arm of his own plaid overshirt. In the light from the windows, he kept picking out small details about Derek: how he was barefoot, the drenched hem of his pants plastered to the tops of his feet, how taut his shoulders looked, held so tensely and not allowed to relax… and Derek still had streaks and splotches of blood on the forearm and hand that Stiles could see. 

That moved Stiles to an uneasy sort of stomach-churning pity he hadn’t felt in a while, for anyone. He blinked and then began to move his hand, kneading the rigid muscles of Derek’s neck. It felt good, he knew that, because back when he and Scott had been actual children they’d used to rub each other’s necks; it had started with playing barber — God only knew why, maybe because Stiles had been fascinated with the look of the red, white and blue barber poles -- and had continued occasionally until they’d gotten old enough to be self-conscious about it. 

Derek didn’t move for a long time, long enough that Stiles’s fingers were starting to hurt. However, Stiles was a dude with extreme determination when he wanted to be, and he didn’t stop. He was wishing his touch could convey the things he had no idea how to say or if he should say, things like _it isn’t okay, but it will be_ and _I’m sorry_ and _you’re not by yourself in this_. Most of all, _it wasn’t your fault. You’re doing everything you can_. That last bit sounded like a platitude to Stiles’s ears… he couldn’t imagine what it would sound like to Derek even if he did say it in all sincerity.

For once in his life, the idea that it might be infinitely better not to speak felt like truth.

Derek moved then, turning his face into his bent knees, and Stiles wasn’t sure how to take that. Was he retreating from the world even further, had Stiles somehow managed to soothe him a little, or was it something else? He liked to think he’d gotten better at reading Derek’s barely visible emotional signals, but he could never be sure. Stiles might never truly understand what made Derek tick, but the guy was never boring, always kept him — and everyone else — guessing.

He continued rubbing Derek’s neck for a few more moments, until he felt like his fingers might seriously fall off his hand, then stopped, flexing them and letting his hand still for a beat before moving it back to his side again. Stiles worried his lip with his teeth and finally broke the extended silence by saying, “You should go change. You’re, like, soaked.” 

_Thank you, Captain Obvious._

The sound Derek made at that almost seemed to be a snort. It was enough to make Stiles’s lips twitch upward, and when Derek didn’t use his words to respond to what he’d said, Stiles reached over and poked him in the side, right under the armpit. “Yo, wolfy. You sleepin’?”

Derek sat up, turning his head to give Stiles one of his notorious unamused dirty looks, although this one didn’t come off that well given Derek’s eyes were bloodshot, swollen and rimmed with red. “Go home,” he said again, but his tone wasn’t sharp and he didn’t look angry. Derek’s expression was mostly unreadable, even if there might have been a touch of confusion in it.

“No,” Stiles shot back without even taking the time to think about it. “Not ‘til you get up from here. You can’t sit like that all night.” Actually, he imagined Derek _could_. It wouldn’t surprise him if morning arrived and Derek was still sitting in this dank room – and if it smelled this bad to Stiles, he couldn’t even process what it must be like for Derek – with his clothes drying on him, all his muscles locked up and stiff. Stiles crossed his arms in front of him, as if to communicate his immovability on that point.

Derek opened his mouth – possibly to pop out with some smart remark like _you’re an idiot_ \-- but then closed it again. He could have been thinking about how quickly a person could be extracted from your life, particularly in places like Beacon Hills. Stiles thought Derek actually looked like there might be any number of things he wanted to say but he wasn’t able to figure out how to say any of them. He could relate to that. Finally, after a couple of minutes of indecision, Derek rolled his eyes and hoisted himself up from the floor.

Without another word, Derek headed for the spiral staircase, his gait stiff. It was probably killing him that he’d done what Stiles wanted him to do, but Stiles didn’t care about that. Derek sitting here all night wasn’t going to do anyone any good, and Stiles hadn’t felt that he could leave him to it. That wasn’t what you did when you cared about someone’s well-being, and as weird as it might be to realize that he cared about Derek’s… he did.

Once Derek’s lower legs and feet had disappeared from sight, up in the second floor of the loft, Stiles got up, pulling a face at how damp his jeans were now. He paused to look around the vast open space, the furniture all moved or pushed aside, the floor still drying, the window marred with the Alpha pack’s symbol. Yeah, this wasn’t over. He knew there’d be more badness to come, and he could only hope it wouldn’t be as bad as this. 

“Keep dreaming,” he mumbled under his breath. 

That being said, Stiles trudged over to the loft’s door and let himself out, pulling it shut behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to follow me on [Tumblr!](http://vertigofreeze.tumblr.com/)


End file.
